[Sigia-l] Making the complex simple

[John Fullerton]

I recently mentioned to colleagues that one need at the academic library
where I work is making the library and library research more
*understandable* to patrons.

I thought that the word understandable was a simplification itself,
however, no one voiced a mutual understanding of the need.

Reflecting on the issue, it seemed to me that in my own limited
experience one memory is central--though I don't know that the idea is
based on that memory. In a set of videos of Edward W. Deming's teaching
about Total Quality Management he often repeated the phrase, "how could
they know?" It seems that he was directly referring to management
knowing if a system was working well without statistics being kept that
correctly monitored production. (Those are my words--from the videos the
direct concept may be having statistics that serve as the basis for a
control chart--to see if the system is within the limits of control--now
I'm near the boundary of my understanding of the concept. A practical
example could be a worker taking pieces out of a bin to add on an
assembly line. There could be reasonable variance in the amount of time
it takes to get a piece from the bin, for reasons like having to turn
the item, and so on, yet through time the process could be defined
statistically--say it takes 2 minutes plus or minus 30 seconds to
assemble 40 pieces. Then if statistics show that it's taking over that
amount of time, management knows to check the system. Why is it taking
more time?)

One other factor that makes understandability significant to me is the
experience of computer programming where coding something typically
brings unexpected factors to attention. For example, write code to
identify URLs in text--then realize that the code may have to account
for a link being on two lines. There again, how could I know in advance
what order to put statements in?

I think that I just ran with the concept of "how could they know?" How
could I know that the reference desk at the library could help me with
my research? What different kinds of experience could tend to limit my
sense that the reference desk could help me? Even for me as a library
worker in the mode of needing reference help, if I don't know a resource
is available, I'm not as likely to ask for the resource.

Have a nice day
John Paul Fullerton
j-fullerton at tamu.edu